For the Syracuse women’s ice hockey team, one question surrounds this weekend’s games against Niagara: Will Friday and Saturday bring the Orange its first victory since Nov. 29?

While that question remains to be answered, sophomore Cheyenne Bojeski and the rest of the Orange (4-16-3, 0-11-3 CHA) can’t deny the importance of this weekend’s tilt.

‘This is a really, really important game,’ Bojeski said. ‘We have already tied them twice, and we need this under our belt. We have been battling really hard against teams, we all want it really bad, and we will be trying very hard this weekend.’

While the team recognizes the importance of these two conference games, head coach Paul Flanagan and the rest of the Orange are very reluctant to say that these games are a necessity for success.

‘Well, I don’t want to go out and say it’s a must (win), but I think it would be great,’ Flanagan said. ‘A ‘W’ would be great for our program, our first league win. The fact that we tied them hopefully will give us confidence, you know, psychologically knowing that we had two good opportunities to beat them in their home rink.’

And just like Flanagan said, the Orange put up its best showing in conference thus far this season against the Golden Eagles.

Two weeks ago, the Orange traveled to Niagara (4-16-4, 1-3-2) for a Saturday-Sunday series. Syracuse outshot the Purple Eagles in both games, yet could only muster two points combined, thanks to two overtime draws with the score knotted up at one. Syracuse has yet to win a conference game in program history.

The two points left the squad with an empty feeling – a feeling of a lost opportunity.

‘We should have come out of that series with four points,’ Flanagan said.

Bojeski concurred with her coach.

‘I think he is absolutely right, we should have come away with four points after those two games, but we just let it slip away from us,’ Bojeski said. ‘We outplayed them, we outshot them, and we did everything right. We just had a few mental mistakes and that was the game, so this weekend we have to work on those.’

Bojeski is referring to the mental mistakes the squad has been making on special teams – struggles that continued last weekend against conference leader Wayne State.

Consequently, Flanagan had the team work extensively on special teams – power plays and short-handed plays – this week in practice so much that when talking about it, his sarcasm took over.

‘We spent a whole lot of time on the power play,’ Flanagan said. ‘We are getting to the point where we want to just refuse a five-on-three, decline it, because we have been so inept. I guess we are just trying to stay away from those special-teams situations.

‘We even worked on them (special teams) Monday which you never do. And it didn’t even look that good on Monday.’

Sophomore forward Rebecca Gordon said that how the team performs in these power-play situations this weekend will dictate the outcome.

‘It’s all about special teams,’ Gordon said. ‘And also in terms of playing team defense and team offense, but I definitely think special teams is a key factor and five-on-three’s are critical situations, especially seeing that we had two of those opportunities last weekend, and we didn’t capitalize on them.’

When Niagara leaves Tennity Ice Pavilion at week’s end, the bottom half of the conference standings will become much clearer. Only one point separates the teams heading into the weekend (four for Niagara, three for Syracuse).

After some thought, Flanagan said that the true effect of this game will not be known until after the weekend concludes.

‘If we do win, I guess we’ll find out how important it truly is for our program,’ Flanagan said.

aolivero@syr.edu

Published on January 30, 2009 at 12:00 pm